MANKATO — Mankato Loyola’s Christine Ohenewah is one of 32 winners of a statewide award — but don’t expect her to tell you about it.

She might rather talk about her upcoming speech competition and how the piece she’s reading delves into topics of racism in the black community. She might rather talk about the youth group she’s involved with at church or Loyola’s chances in the next basketball game.

Anything, really, except her own accomplishments.

“She is very unassuming,” said Kim Rotchadl, Loyola’s theater director. “A lot of people may never guess how much she has going.”

Her 3.9 grade-point average is only a notch below perfect. She’s involved in a number of school activities from Student Council to speech, and is involved in her church. She participates in theater and the one-act play competition. And, for the first time, she joined volleyball last fall.

After graduating high school, Ohenewah said she wants to attend Stanford University and become an anesthesiologist. She would be a pediatrician, she said, but a job shadow in eighth grade showed her she didn’t like working in the same office all day.

She was chosen to participate in a three-day leadership institute last summer and attended a seminar on ministering recently.

Teachers say she is a mentor. Classmates say she is a role model.

And the Minnesota State High School League thinks she’s one of the 32 most deserving high school juniors in the state for the ExCEL Award, given annually to students who demonstrate leadership in school and community.

“You can’t ask for a more outstanding young lady,” said Brad O’Donnell, Loyola activities director. “We’re blessed to have that type of person in our school.”

Christine Efra Ohenewah was born in Ghana’s capital of Accra, a growing coastal city of more than 1.6 million people on the South Atlantic Ocean.

At the age of 2, she moved with her parents to Guelph, Ontario, Canada, where her father attended college. She came to Mankato in junior high and is hoping to make her first visit back to her West African birthplace this summer with her dad.

But her geographical journey has not been so long as her personal journey, Ohenewah said. Of all her accolades and activities, she is most proud of overcoming the fear of what people think of her. She said she isn’t afraid to take risks — she once tried to get her classmates to all sit together at lunch with admittedly mixed results — and she isn’t afraid to be herself.

Rotchadl said the soft-spoken young woman even has a commanding stage presence and a “big, booming” singing voice. She remembers, in particular, Ohenewah’s role as the Great Belladonna in the school’s one-act play “Two Horns and a Tale.” As the senior devil in hell, Belladonna’s role requires a certain confidence not all actors can muster.

“She would make you sit up and take notice,” Rotchadl said.

Other regional winners of the ExCEL Award include: Rachel Bjork of Le Sueur-Henderson, Isaiah Butler of Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s, George Hirschboeck of Sleepy Eye and Andrew Theis of Sibley East.